I know most don't care anymore, but this stuff really is very disturbing. Unfortunately, most are too busy with their Class Warfare & Race-Baiting B.S. to pay attention to the things that really matter. Shame on both Republicans and Democrats for forcing this Unamerican travesty on the American People. Big Brother just keeps getting bigger & bigger. What a shame.

Up until this afternoon, the final vote on CISPA was supposed to be tomorrow. Then, abruptly, it was moved up today&#8212;and the House voted in favor of its passage with a vote of 248-168. But that's not even the worst part.

The vote followed the debate on amendments, several of which were passed. Among them was an absolutely terrible change (pdf and embedded below&#8212;scroll to amendment #6) to the definition of what the government can do with shared information, put forth by Rep. Quayle. Astonishingly, it was described as limiting the government's power, even though it in fact expands it by adding more items to the list of acceptable purposes for which shared information can be used. Even more astonishingly, it passed with a near-unanimous vote. The CISPA that was just approved by the House is much worse than the CISPA being discussed as recently as this morning.

Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for "cybersecurity" or "national security" purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA.

Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a "cybersecurity crime". Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened&#8212;again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government's power.

How to go about it...Executives advocate a military approach to cybersecurityAugust 13th, 2012 - A new study being released by a private Internet security company highlights cyberworld weaknesses when it comes to gathering intelligence on hackers and suggests that businesses take a more military-minded approach to defense.

The cybersecurity company CounterTack polled 100 information security executives at companies with revenues greater than $100 million. Nearly half of the respondents said their organization had been the victim of a targeted cyberattack within the past year. Some 80% of those polled believe that taking a more military-minded approach to the cyberwar could benefit business, according to CounterTack CEO Neal Creighton, whose firm released the poll Monday. For Creighton, that means incorporating more military-style intelligence gathering into companies' cyberworld defenses. "We're talking about that great intelligence real-time situational awareness," said Creighton, who added that hackers will get into systems, and when they do, companies need to know in real time not only that the intrusion has occurred, but also what the hacker's intentions are. "Today's attacks are very targeted, so when they come after you, they probably have something that no one else has seen before, so what we're advocating is once they have penetrated the network, that you have technologies that look at behaviors based on what the attacker is going to do," Creighton said.

CounterTack is one of several companies in the private sector that focus on gathering information on the threat as it is happening as a key strategy for defense, in addition to building effective firewalls. But the CounterTack survey, though not a scientific one, found that those capabilities are lacking. Surveyed executives said their most pressing challenges when it comes to combating "advanced persistent threats are "disparate systems that don't talk to each other" (63%) and having trouble gathering relevant attack 'intelligence' in real time (61%). Cybersecurity experts have often warned that by the time a company realizes it has been hacked, the damage has already been done. When it comes specifically to the issue of training these new cyberwar soldiers, 44% of executives, according to the CounterTack study, said that their team members didn't have the necessary technical skills to combat the threat. CounterTack has hired retired Admiral William Fallon, who has experience heading both U.S. Central Command and Pacific Command to help them in their push to get companies to focus on this military-minded approach. Government is also making the case for better recruitment cyber warriors.

The head of U.S. Cyber Command, Gen. Keith Alexander, made a rare appearance at a hacker's conference in Las Vegas last month encouraging those with advanced cyber skill sets to put them to work for the U.S. government. The Senate recently failed in its effort to pass basic cybersecurity legislation that would have allowed a closer public-private partnership when it comes to information sharing on cyberworld threats. In light of that, the White House is mulling its options. The President's homeland security adviser, John Brennan, suggested last week that the president may issue an executive order that would allow the government to use more of the tools it has on hand to combat the growing threat. Brennan added that such a measure would likely encompass a combination of resources from the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency and the FBI.

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